Joy School--The 5 Senses

The Joy School lesson I taught last month was on the 5 Senses.  It was a blast! I'm never able to get very good photos during JS because it's so crazy and I have my hands full, but I snapped just a few.  We did an activity to teach about each of the senses.

1. Sight

I showed the kids this tray of varying objects.  They were to study it for a couple minutes, then I hid the tray and asked them what they remembered seeing.  Between the 5 of them they remembered it all!  :)

2. Sound

I attempted to blindfold the kids (a few of them didn't want to be blindfolded).  Others had to try to cover their eyes (yeah, right).  I did a few different things that made noise, and they had to guess what the sound was.  I jingled keys, filled a glass with water, pulled velcro on a shoe, and yawned.  (The yawning was their hardest one to guess.)  The rest they did pretty good!

3. Touch

I filled paper bags with objects that would appeal to their sense of touch.  There was: a feather, a scratchy sponge, a pinecone, pom pom balls, etc.  Again, they were supposed to be blindfolded, but obviously that wasn't going so well.  This was their hardest activity because they couldn't keep from peeking!  They were supposed to pass the bags around and feel the object, but keep it to themselves until we talked about it.  Of course none of them could stay quiet, and blurted the answer right away.

4. Smell

For the sense of smell, I poured a few strong aromas (mostly ingredients) into cups, and had them each smell and guess what they thought it was.  The aromas were: chili powder, nutmeg, pepper, cilantro, and lemon.

5. Taste

Lastly, we tested our sense of taste.  The kids were all excited to try the different flavors: cocoa powder, salt, lemon, and sugar.

Eli liked the tiny bit of cocoa powder that he got in his mouth, so he decided to take an even bigger bite.  Not a good idea!  Hahaha, his face was so funny!  The lemon he liked in small doses.  But of course, best of all was the sugar, which EVERY kid had more helpings of!  :)

We finished with a fun craft, making a picture of themselves with bells for ears, sandpaper for hands, shaky eyeballs for eyes, a perfume-dipped cotton ball for nose, and a licorice piece for a mouth.  I was pleased that Eli could recall all of his 5 Senses days after this lesson.  We had fun while learning!